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United States of America
The United States of America, colloquially referred to as the United States, U.S., or simply America, was a pre-War federal republic, and one of the only two known nuclear superpowers remaining by the end of the Resource Wars in 2077. By that point, the U.S.A. had around 400 million citizens, with a political system increasingly controlled by a military-corporate oligarchy with access to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, fusion technology, orbital facilities, and other advanced technologies it had pioneered. The United States ceased to exist during and after the eleven year long Sino-American War came to a close, when it and the People's Republic of China unleashed their nuclear arsenals upon each other. As the American government controlled by the military-corporate oligarchs abandoned the country shortly before the nuclear exchanges began, there was no command and control structure remaining that could organize any recovery efforts, leading to the total or near collapse of society, economy, and its military. Survivors went on to organize themselves on their own, creating new tribes, states, and other recognizable organizations. The largest and arguably most important of these, became known as the New California Republic, a sovereign democratic state with hundreds of thousands of citizens, a standing army, and the largest known economy in the post-nuclear world. Other notable states include the totalitarian Caesar's Legion, a militaristic autocracy, and the Enclave, a minuscule nation state claiming to be the legal continuation of the United States. 'History' Following the Divergence, the United States aggressively asserted its position as the world's foremost superpower. Intense research into space technologies and funding of the United States Space Agency, resulted in the pioneering flight of Defiance 7 on May 5, 1961, when Captain Carl Bell became the first known human in space. However, the claim was widely disputed by the Soviet Union and China. By the end of the decade, the United States had achieved victory in the space race, as the Virgo II lunar lander touched down on the surface of Earth's moon on July 16, 1969. Valiant 11 mission members, Captain Richard Wade, Captain Mark Garris, and Captain Michael Hagen, became the first humans known to have walked on the surface of another celestial body.[5] Another mission followed directly afterwards, and on November 14 of that same year, Virgo III of Valiant 12 landed on the moon. The flag was subsequently retrieved for display in the Museum of Technology.[6] The space exploration program petered out by 2034, when the last known manned mission to the Moon occurred, and remaining crewed rockets, such as the Delta IX, were converted into military ordnance as the global situation deteriorated. 'The Resource wars' These series of conflicts were but one symptom of an increasingly aggressive foreign policy, adopted as a result of the increasing shortage of critical resources, including crude oil. One example came in 2051, when the United States began exerting pressure on Mexico, in order to protect their economic interests there, primarily the crude oil supply. The U.S. deliberately destabilized the country using economic sanctions, before invading the country outright. American military units seized oil refineries and infrastructure to ensure that the flow of crude oil did not cease.[8] However, these tactics did little to avert the crisis, and as the Texan oil fields ran dry, their withering husks revealed to the American public just how deep the resource and energy crisis was, in a landmark 2052 television documentary.[9] Not long afterwards, rising oil prices worldwide bankrupted smaller nations, which lead to the European Commonwealth declaring war on the Middle East; the United States was also severely affected by the skyrocketing prices of oil, which led to further imperialist aggression.[10] The dissolution of the United Nations in July marked the beginning of the road towards nuclear annihilation. Another blow was struck in 2053, when the New Plague virus emerged. The virulent nature of the contagion and the speed at which it had spread led to the first ever national quarantine and the closing of American borders. Tens of thousands died.[13] In 2055, the government commissioned West-Tek to develop a cure for the virus. Though no cure was known to have ever been found, the research into a cure paved the way for subsequent biochemical research efforts.[14] Nuclear exchanges in the Middle East, along with the devastating Euro-Middle Eastern War and the New Plague's death toll, caused the federal government to initiate Project Safehouse in 2054, which created fallout shelters that would protect a percentage of the United State's population in the event of a nuclear war or fatal plague. The Vault-Tec Corporation won the contract, and this massive national defense project was set in motion. Breakthroughs in construction technology allowed for these gargantuan bunkers to be constructed at a rapid pace, although Vault-Tec's status as a critical defense contractor, and the classified nature of its enterprises, lead to many instances of fraud and mismanagement.[15][16] By the end of the decade, in 2059, the United States began to prepare for war, as the global situation continued to worsen. The Anchorage front line had been established in Alaska, to protect its oil reserves from foreign invaders. Canada had also begun to feel the pressure exerted by its increasingly hostile neighbor.[17] As a peculiar consolation prize to wrap up the decade, the first artificial intelligence was born in American laboratories. Limited by memory constraints, its expansion was rapidly halted. The discovery paved the way for future research in laboratories throughout the United States.